Metallica’s “The Call of Ktulu” is like an eerie soundtrack to something ancient and terrifying lurking just beneath the surface. The whole song feels like a slow, deliberate wake-up call for an otherworldly monster straight out of Lovecraft’s nightmares. Without any lyrics, it’s the music itself that tells the story—starting off quiet and haunting, then gradually building layers of tension like the air getting heavier before a storm, pulling you into an unsettling experience of growing dread.
What’s cool is how each instrument adds its own flavor to that feeling. Cliff Burton’s bass rumbles low and deep, almost like the sea itself is grumbling, while the guitars slowly creep in with sharp, sometimes almost claw-like riffs. Lars Ulrich’s drums keep everything feeling urgent without rushing it, like the heartbeat of something big and unstoppable. It’s not just playing metal riffs; it’s like they’re painting a picture of a cosmic beast stirring from an ancient sleep, and you can’t look away even though you’re scared.
Interestingly, “The Call of Ktulu” was initially started by Dave Mustaine before his dismissal from Metallica, but it ultimately became a collaborative piece among all four original band members. Released as part of their 1984 album Ride the Lightning, the song reached new heights when performed with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra on the live album S&M. The legendary composer Michael Kamen arranged and conducted the orchestral parts, adding sweeping strings and powerful brass that turned the track into an apocalyptic ritual of sound, blending Metallica’s heavy riffs with symphonic grandeur and amplifying the song’s cosmic horror vibe to an unforgettable level.
If you’re into heavy music with a dark, spooky vibe, Metallica’s “The Thing That Should Not Be” is a must-listen. The song draws heavy inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s stories about ancient sea monsters and forbidden gods — you can feel that eerie cosmic horror flowing through the lyrics and music. Unlike their faster, thrashy songs, this one’s slower and heavier, building this oppressive, almost underwater atmosphere that really pulls you into a different world. The sounds perfectly suit a cosmic horror soundtrack, like you’re hearing something ancient waking up beneath the surface.
Every member of Metallica brings something special here. James Hetfield’s vocals nail that storytelling vibe, like he’s warning you about unspeakable horrors. Kirk Hammett’s guitar solo adds a weird, haunting layer with its echoing bends and wild tone, totally fitting the Lovecraftian theme. Cliff Burton’s bass work gives the song a thick, gnarly depth that makes everything feel huge and otherworldly, while Lars Ulrich’s steady drumming drives the mood without rushing it. Together, they craft this dense, crushing atmosphere that feels like it could be the soundtrack to a cosmic nightmare.
If you want to hear the song take on an epic new dimension, check out the S&M version with the San Francisco Symphony. The orchestra adds massive, cinematic power, turning the track into a full-on cosmic horror soundtrack. The strings and brass layer in this grand, haunting sound that makes the whole thing feel even more apocalyptic and intense. It’s like Metallica took their already heavy and spooky song and gave it the kind of scale and depth that only a symphony can provide. Definitely worth a listen if you want to experience cosmic horror in both metal and orchestral form.
The Thing That Should Not Be
Messenger of fear in sight Dark deception kills the light Hybrid children watch the sea Pray for father, roaming free
Fearless wretch Insanity He watches Lurking beneath the sea
Great old one Forbidden site He searches Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal In madness you dwell
Crawling chaos, underground Cult has summoned, twisted sound Out from ruins once possessed Fallen city, living death
Fearless wretch Insanity He watches Lurking beneath the sea
Timeless sleep Has been upset He awakens Hunter of the shadows is rising
Immortal In madness you dwell
[Guitar solo]
Not dead which eternal lie Stranger eons death may die Drain you of your sanity Face the thing that should not be
Fearless wretch Insanity He watches Lurking beneath the sea
Great old one Forbidden site He searches Hunter of the shadows is rising
Liu Zhenyang hit the ground running in his first year, and I have to admit I didn’t get the hype at all at first. His debut album felt a fair bit overcooked to me, and the second didn’t evolve enough to keep me listening when the third started to really make waves. I decided to give his 2024 album a fair shot when it came out though, and I was impressed by how far he’d come. At this point the initial bias has faded away and I’m very interested to see what’s next. The woodwind incorporation, if predictable for the scene, is a welcome expansion (that might have shown up by the previous album, I am unsure) and applied in more interesting ways than most. The ratio of weird experimental things to repetition has been ramped up quite a bit. It still has more filler space than I care for. I am still disproportionately interested in what he’s doing vs the way it makes me feel. The ambience doesn’t seem quite there yet. But this album has advanced Hoplite from a state of disinterest to definite curiosity. I enjoyed exploring this more than most despite limited replay value. His next album will go in the sample bin without hesitation.
To All Trains doesn’t achieve as much as Dude Incredible, but no Albini project has. The last Shellac album was simply higher level stuff few bands can muster in my estimate. This one is more humble–shorter and to the point. I listened to enough music this year that a simple “I enjoyed and remembered it” didn’t always guarantee a spot on the list. Maybe Steve dying made me sentimental, but I want to believe To All Trains got here because it’s fun. Steve’s social awareness evolved a lot over the years, but his underlying attitude was core to his being and continues to resonate here. It’s well-dressed punk. It’s tightly held together but oozes snark along the seams. It’s anti-music, and that always puts a smile on my face. I doubt Steve expected “I Don’t Fear Hell” to be the last song of his career, but it’s as fitting an end as any. Rip you were a legend.
Muuntautuja offers a clear progression from Mestarin kynsi into more industrial and electronic territories. The continuity is there, but the styles have certainly evolved. It’s a stretch to call this a metal album, and that’s fine. It ships really chill and dark vibes I have found no struggle enjoying. It doesn’t have the epic progressions and dire climaxes of its predecessor that saw that album near the top of my 2020 list. It’s a more mood-oriented work, and it offers a persistently dark one.
It’s easy for me to undersell this album because it’s not God’s Country, but rarely has a band transitioned from my #1 aoty to not placing at all, and Chat Pile are no exception. Instrumentally, the album picks right up where they left off and offers some really imaginative and bleak progressions that hit off a sort of anti-pop aesthetic I can easily embrace. Raygun Busch’s unique vocals wear on me in a way they didn’t last time, such that by the closing track, No Way Out, I’m distinctly wanting something more from him. The compositions often grant that–No Way Out even unexpectedly rips into blast beats–but shouting “no escape” over and over doesn’t hit home on a remotely proximate plane of existence to grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg’s world-ending caterwauls. He just doesn’t feel as consistently engaged with what he’s saying. But I don’t think it’s overly fair to double down on a comparison to literally my favorite album of 2022. Cool World is still a highly rewarding if somewhat front-loaded product. And I swear I will finally watch that movie one day. I still remember the mystique of a PG-13-rated cartoon in the early 90s lol
I was pretty late to the ballgame with Dirty Three. Warren Ellis is fairly well known for his role in Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but I first discovering Dirty Three in 2021, close to two decades since they were releasing material on a regular basis. Ocean Songs has since found a home among my all-time favorite albums, and Whatever You Love You Are and She Has No Strings Apollo are way up there. I was pretty surprised to get the bandcamp notice that they had a new album coming this year, their first in a dozen. Love Changes Everything has been slow to grow on me, but it’s been a steady process that, by December, had earned it a spot. It’s not an album I enjoy paying attention to. It’s something I want on in the background to form my mood. It’s chaotic but peaceful. It’s a happy place I easily forget but don’t want to leave once I enter; something I’m prone to put on repeat once I’ve clicked play.
If I am being the old guy who won’t let go of his youthful favorites, I am ok with that. Cometh the Storm offers absolutely nothing new and is ideal because of that. I am never going to complain about more Matt Pike doing his thing, and he does his thing completely true to form on this album. I listened to it quite a lot and it became my go-to workout album for a while. It’s just fun and I will never grow tired of their sound.
I picked up Kurokuma’s debut album, Born of Obsidian, sampling new metal releases on bandcamp without any rhyme or reason, and it just barely missed out on the top 35 chart I posted end of 2022. I actually forgot all about them and, probably with some algorithmic prioritization, also stumbled into Of Amber and Sand randomly sampling new metal releases on bandcamp. Pleased to say this album feels like an improvement on every level. I keep seeing doom and sludge applied as their style, but I dunno, to me the Sepultura vibes are unmistakable. It certainly does embrace sludge textures. I don’t think those labels are necessarily wrong. Kurokuma just uniquely appeal to me for their rhythms more than their melodies. There’s something deeply tribal to it.
Three years of keeping up with Asthâghul’s music hasn’t managed to make it any less weird. Or maybe he’s making it more weird with each release, I don’t know and don’t have much desire to look back. It’s a bizarre and moody package I’ve come to expect and look forward to. His vocals are a litmus test for the capacity to enjoy people doing weird things with their mouths, especially lately as he’s shifted the rest of his sound from harsh abrasiveness to somewhat soothing atmospheres. When I first heard Consecration of the Spiritüs Flesh I took it to be some sort of rebellion against convention, but I’ve grown increasingly more convinced that it’s just how he likes to sing. I don’t think this album will appeal to most, but I’ve been enjoying his cosmic vibes as a flavorful background piece quite a bit and the vocals are… certainly an unmistakable watermark.
I went on a big catch-up-on-what-I-missed binge in April that didn’t yield terribly much, but it did yield Witch Vomit, and I’ve been going back to this album pretty regularly all year long. It’s just solid, tastefully produced death metal, encompassing but not overbearing. The songs are never quite too catchy to feel redundant or too abstract to feel like songs. A Scream from the Tomb Below didn’t quite make it onto my 2016 chart and I missed out on Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave entirely, but Funeral Sanctum rises to the occasion. I mean, my tastes have gravitated a lot more towards death metal in recent years too, so I don’t want to say A Scream was sub-par. Might not have been quite my vibe in the moment. Funeral Sanctum clicked with me immediately.
The latest-discovered addition to my list. I didn’t actually run into this until December, but I’ve listened to it a hell of a lot since so I don’t feel biased placing it. If anything it should be higher. To be blunt, this gave me what I wanted and couldn’t find on the new Akhlys album. It’s the same sort of haunt and horror but delivered in a raw and direct way that permits the instruments to carry. Where that album is so overproduced I just hear soup and lament that something appealing might be lurking below, every instrument shines throughout Weaver of the Black Moon and the quality song-crafting can’t be missed. The bass is especially noteworthy, a rare thing to say about a black metal album.
Every year I need one album to put on when I could not possibly give a fuck about anything. Thank you for providing me with that album this year, Korrosive. Thrash usually turns me off because it’s not heavy enough but this uh lol this is heavy enough.
This album is strange. I do not know what to call it. Instruments are played. People make noises with mouths and other objects. He likes to scream a lot. Electronic things happen too. It’s a neurotic clusterfuck that puts on the outward appearance of containing songs with structure but I’m pretty sure they’re just hitting things and pressing buttons to see what happens. I loved it.
A Diabolical Thirst won me over full force in 2021 and remains one of my most frequently revisited albums from that year. Needless to say, I had this on pre-order the moment it was announced. Not quite so many tracks on Songs of Blood and Mire sear sick hooks in my brain. I didn’t end the year remembering one start to finish to the extent of Frigid and Spellbound. But Spectral Wound didn’t deviate in the slightest from the standard they set, and that’s about as good as straight forward black metal gets.
I picked this up on pre-order based on sample tracks before I even knew they were kind of a big deal. In the vast compendium of bands trying to go hard, these guys just get it done better than most. Rich full textures smash brick walls in robust and flavorful ways. It filled a need for endless pummeling brutality that never grew old throughout the year.
Notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes notes. This album contains many of them. Two hands on the fret board all day here. (Ok, maybe not for a bit in the sample track I used, but the point withstands!) It hedges on silly, but what metal doesn’t one way or another? I try to keep up with I, Voidhanger releases and hit it off with this one right away. Just kind of landed a sweet spot between fun and ferocious.
Tune in here if you enjoy Krallice at their noodliest or dial-up modem aesthetics transposed for guitar. This album packs a ton of eclectic licks and endless dissonant tremolo. Where Aveilut offered a distinct journey through a soundscape, The Promise of Rain stays put. I don’t get the sense of the album progressing somewhere. It is perhaps not as grimly inspiring for that, but it certainly tickles my love for chaotically sequenced note soup. This band’s 2/2 now on top quality albums. If you like this, definitely check out Aveilut as well.
Yep! I don’t think I’ve ever included Nightwish on a year end list before… I expected to be wrong on that claim, but yeah my lists goes back to 2002 and I never did it. Well, this is really good. Maybe some of their other albums were too and I just wasn’t in the mood at the time, but I think they nailed this one in a way old bands rarely manage. It’s punchy and well paced. The orchestration is big and bold in that classic 00s way I don’t hear bands pull off nearly as often these days, and that definitely carries the show. I’m always the most leery of vocals in this style of music. Floor Jansen kinda nails it too though, never getting in the way and deliciously complimenting the soundscape rather than trying to steal the spotlight. She certainly has spotlight moments, but they’re catchy melodies and don’t wear out their welcome. It’s been a minute since I gave a Nightwish album a fair shot and now I’m very curious to see if their last few trended in this direction as well. Might turn into a January binge.
A meandering jazzy metal glob that probably won’t sound how you expect that description to. This album breaks from recent trends of jazz in metal. It’s dissonant, certainly, but it feels so alive. I’ve never heard anything quite like it, and it didn’t wear out its welcome when the novelty passed. Some overlap with Botanist in production and instrumentation perhaps, but applied towards a very different sensation. Highly recommend checking this one out even if metal isn’t your thing.
Some black metal band doing standard black metal things is inevitably going to make my charts just on the massive quantity of this sort of stuff I listen to. Aldheorte appealed to me more than most. Really nice song-writing here if you’re into the melancholy, forlorn side of things. It sometimes had me thinking of Spectral Wound in terms of capacity to ship memorable melodies over relentless pummeling bm standard techniques. Not to say it sounds anything like A Diabolic Thirst or even appealed to me in the same way, but similar elements stood out to me. In a year where for reasons I can’t comprehend I found like a dozen new black metal bands starting with the letter A, Aldheorte overcame their name and cemented a spot among my favorites.
A complex, rich, vastly ranging album that I think could readily appeal to fans of maudlin of the Well. There’s so much to absorb here, in the complexity of things going on in the moment for sure but even more so in the abstract, unorthodox stylistic transitions and song progressions that leave my head spinning and wondering what I just listened to. Pleroma has more to yield than I have time to listen to. It’s a treasure. A curious, uncharted territory waiting to be explored. That I didn’t drop everything I was doing to become deeply and intimately acquainted with every moment is a reality I have to accommodate. Its mood doesn’t resonate with my personal tastes quite enough for me to compulsively put it on over and over again. This is a list of my favorites, not of what I think was “best”, but it’s hard to deny this album’s viability for the latter title.
Man, this album grooves. Fantastic tempo-dynamic roll that bleeds confidence and touches a sweet spot between the bonecrusher catwalk and a furious pulp machine. Sometimes I’m being eviscerated with a chainsaw and sometimes an ogre is sitting on my face. What’s not to love?
I love Thou. I mean, above and beyond the music. They feel like a crew I could just immediately get along with if life chanced me into their midst. They have such a personable stage presence. They like the shit I do. They covered Soundgarden’s 4th of July and Born Against’s Well Fed Fuck on the same album how fucking cool is that. I want to see Thou succeed. They’ve got that fan base connection only a few artists manage. But that hasn’t compelled me to put all of their albums high on my charts. Umbilical is here because it’s really, really good. It goes a lot heavier than 2018’s Magus and ramps up the personality along the way. This is a weird comparison, but I get similar vibes to Boris in terms of like, an extremely extroverted song-writing process that absorbs everything around it and passes it through a core sound filter. It feels so human despite being ridiculously heavy.
I haven’t enjoyed eating shit this much since Dave Brockie died. The album immediately ostracizes anyone with a shred of respectability by way of super-cheesy space alien vocals, and they ride that gimmick the full 33 minute duration. It’s corny as hell in the best possible way, because the guitars absolutely slay throughout and I’m grinning ear to ear listening to them. She’s walkin’ down the alley of the shadow of death, but she’s got nothin’ to fear CAUSE SHE’S EVIL.
12. modest by default – South Cougars Jazz Ensemble
I don’t actually highlight vaporwave nearly as much as I listen to it, and I really, really need to fix that, because in the decade since I stumbled into a 100 album Dream Catalogue dump this genre has evolved and expanded with impressive results in every possible direction. modest by default is my current golden standard, and I think if you give it a sample you’ll quickly understand why. I have absolutely no idea to what extent he’s manipulating the source material in these, but be it a ton or just barely, my ears do not care they know that they are hearing gold. Holy hell I listened to this artist 330 times and counting this year. There’s so much material. If you like what you’re hearing you’re in for one hell of an archive. I’m letting this album represent all six of his 2024 releases because it’s the one that I remember the most individually. Having listened to all 36 of his releases this year, I’m not going to even try to figure out which was which.
By the way, wtf is up with zoomers being all fired up for deaths dynamic shroud.wmv? That feels so random lol where’s the 식료품groceries and Hong Kong Express love if we’re fishing through that can of worms.
11. Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”
How is it that post-rock is turning 30 but these guys still do it best? Not many artists are as consistently outstanding as Efrim Menuck. Obviously a lot of other musicians are in play for Godspeed creations, but everything he touches is gold. Except All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling I guess, but the lost recording rediscovery adventure in 2022 made that album just as worthwhile in its unique way as the rest. I am an old and I have been listening to Godspeed since f#a#oo was a hot new internet file trading sensation at the turn of the century. I think they just keep getting better. I’ve taken to calling Luciferian Towers their best album, and damn this one comes close. (Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything by A Silver Mt. Zion is still #1 though; go listen to it immediately if you have not.) I didn’t get invested in God’s Pee and I don’t know why, but No Title took no effort whatsoever. It has been an absolute joy throughout its three months of existence and I am nowhere near done listening to it as I write this. Every moment of this album is a blessing. The progressions are absolute bliss. The climaxes never amass anticipation because the journey to them is always just as good. They’re just peaks you never asked for. A nice view along the ride. It does assume a darker tone beginning with the Broken Spires at Dead Kapital interlude, but by then I’m always so high on what I’ve heard that it doesn’t really shift my mood, just expands the palette.
Shockingly, this is the only Trha album on my list this year. Don’t worry, I didn’t stop being a sucker for everything Damian releases under the name. He just only released one full length and spent most of his time doing Sadness albums instead. Everything you could want in a Trhä album showed up on demand though. It’s raw lofi bm emo’d to the pit of my sadboi heart. I can’t distinguish his releases in my head anymore, but I want to say this one ships classic black metal more aggressively than most. That’s fine by me.
9. Theurgy – Emanations of Unconscious Luminescence
Really masterful tech bdm. The vocals put most of the genre to shame, and I can’t emphasize that enough. I can’t think of anything that sounds this consistently satisfying in pursuit of pig stuck in an unflushed toilet aesthetic. The songs aren’t just interesting in a wtf are they doing sort of way. There are compelling melodic progressions in this package. This is an album that taps so many interests at once for me. It’s brutal and ridiculous, but it’s introspective and kind of thoughtful too.
I’ve listened to most Winterfylleth albums at least once over the years, but the stars never quite aligned to get me engaged with them on the level this album spoke to me. I sense a strong stylistic overlap with Drudkh, one of my all time favorites. But the emotional leverage these songs carry keeps making me think of screamo-black metal hybrid Bosse-de-Nage, maybe an obscure reference but certainly a complimentary one. I feel like a lot of the album is building up around In Silent Grace, a sort of black metal ballad near the later middle of the mix featuring Nemtheanga on guest vox. It’s a break from the other songs, so my comparisons are going to look really silly if it’s the only track you listen to, but it’s definitely my favorite and the highlight cementing this as a top year-end contender.
Depending on where you’re reading this you might not have gotten the memo, but over the past two years Everything Everything have grown to compete with The Drones as my favorite radio-friendly unit shifter since Radiohead. Mountainhead feels like a weak album at a glance when I distance myself from it very specifically because the opening track Wild Guess is easily one of my least favorite songs they’ve ever written. But the rest is bliss and as soon as I put it on I remember that again. Mountainhead doesn’t quite encroach on my holy trinity of Raw Data Feel, Get to Heaven, and Man Alive, but damn do I adore this.
If a lyric of the year award exists, the growling of your stomach’s eldritch heart is spilling into waking life deserves it in every universe.
Ulcerate’s ceiling is through the roof. Stare Into Death and Be Still would have taken my 2020 album of the year crown if I’d known about it before it won MA’s album of the year poll. This is the first album they’ve released since they’ve been on my radar, and while Stare Into Death and Be Still remains my golden standard (good lord, this band has accumulated 1200 plays in a span of four years, and their songs aren’t exactly short), I listened to this the most of anything released in 2024 without even trying. They have mastered what I want. This is everything my ears crave. Maybe I’m not as deeply engaged in the things that are happening around me as I was in the heyday of Krallice and Liturgy, but the sustainability of it all is unprecedented. They ship an eternal mood. So full, so rich, so comprehensive. I remember seeing “voidgaze” pop up on fmbot tags and barely going wtf does that mean before understanding it means Ulcerate. Stare into death and be still.
It’s black metal in French of course it’s good. I mean, I gobble up anything I see with a medieval bm tag, and this was the one I found that held my attention. It’s rather Agalloch-attuned on the folk side and maybe appreciates a bit of Amesoeurs-styled post-punk too, but it isn’t afraid to black ‘n’ roll along the way. Really that’s this album’s greatest strength. It fucking rocks, despite never quite holistically vibing like it will. Like, three and a half into Le Grand Hyver we’re full throttle heavy metal soloing, and it fits but I never hear it coming until I get there. Every track exceeds expectations on attentive listens, and it’s quite satisfying as a background piece as well.
The opening track on this album is so good I don’t even have to remember the rest exists to want it high on my charts. Wait, no, I didn’t forget the other songs. It’s just flows like one continuous masterpiece. Progressive and atmospheric conjure very different things to my mind in a metal context. One suggests a lot of twists and turns, the other a highly consistent ride. This is kinda both. Think later day Enslaved if they listened to a lot of Oranssi Pazuzu and also liked prog rock and jazz.
I chose to sample this because I was feeling an itch for power metal this year and it had awesome cover art. It turned out to be one of my most played albums of the year. They’ve got a fantastic range of instrumental and song-writing talent. Every song hits like it matters, whether it’s a power metal ballad or a fast-pumping Ensifereverent folk metal shredder. This album is a collection of anthems. It makes me think of the 00s golden age of folk metal, when a lot of power metal bands were also tapping into that scene’s energy. I don’t remember any Japanese bands fully capitalizing on that potential before and I love hearing it now. I’ll be keeping up with this relatively young band in years to come for sure.
Every year I run a game where like 50+ people submit 8 songs to me, and it is the source of most of my non-metal awareness of new music. I received two Eunuchs submissions this year and the rest is history. This album isn’t metal, but it certainly goes hard. The lyrics are insanely dark. Everything is dark and horrible and wonderful and just listen to it.
From Austin Lunn, to Ayloss, to Damián Antón Ojeda, a lot of solo musicians have claimed my favorite artist of the moment crown over the past decade and a half. If Erech Leleth continues to release music on a regular basis, he’s next. I absolutely fell in love with Chapter Two: The Resistance by Ancient Mastery last year. Unfortunately, it was released in 2022, a bit late to contend for my #1 album of that year. I had Akt III by Narzissus on pre-order, and despite dropping on January 12th, not many albums challenged it. The song-writing is so good aaaaaaaaaaa. It’s like everything I love about folk metal reskinned in black metal a la Falkenbach but with all of the vision of a prog or power metal concept album epic. It’s so filled with creativity and vibrance and life. This album deeply influenced my entire 2023 listening trajectory, compelling me to seek out a lot of more melody-driven artists and giving power metal a new lease on life in my exploratory repertoire. Make no mistake; this isn’t a power metal album. It’s just got that narrative grandeur fully locked down.
Through good times and bad I have always been a huge fan and follower of Metallica. Even as they foolishly went off track following the path Bob Rock set for them throughout most of the 1990’s through the disastrous St. Anger debacle as they tried to return to their earlier sound, I have always followed this band which made up the original Big 4 of thrash metal (Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth).
It was on their 1998 cover album, Garage Inc., that the band released one of their most popular songs. It wasn’t an original, but a cover of the classic Bob Seger hard rock song about the hard road and life of a musician. Seger’s “Turn the Page” is just one of those hard rock tunes that latches onto the listener and forces them to listen and understand. Most such songs tend to be quite pretentious with nothing much to say once the listener really pays attention. The same cannot be said about Seger’s song.
Metallica decided to cover this song for their Garage Inc. album which was all about them covering their own favorite hard rock and metal songs of the past. While Metallica kept the original’s tempo, they added their own heavier and harder edge to song that straddles the line between hard rock and heavy metal. Even James Hetfield’s alcohol and cigarette ravaged vocals lent a sense of the hard road and life the track sings about.
The biggest change from the Seger song to Metallica’s cover has to be the accompanying music video which still remains one of the most controversial in MTV’s music video history (well, when they still played music videos). Seger’s song was released in 1973 when the concept of music video was nonexistent. With Metallica’s cover it was almost a guarantee that it would get a music video and what a video it was and still is.
The video was directed by Jonas Akerlund who had made a name for himself directing some of the most creative and innovative music videos of the day. His take on the song switches from a musician’s hard road and life on the road to that of a single mother trying to make ends meet as an erotic dancer by day and a prostitute by night to provide for her young daughter. The video was banned from receiving any sort of airplay on MTV as it dealt and showed the disturbing side of such a life. The fact that the tamer version of the video (below) still couldn’t make it on the airwaves just showed how much more haunting and controversial the uncensored version turned out to be.
Turn the Page
On a long and lonesome highway, East of Omaha You can listen to the engines Moanin’ out it’s one note song You can think about the woman, Or the girl you knew the night before But your thoughts will soon be wanderin’, The way they always do When you’re ridin’ 16 hours, And there’s nothin’ much to do And you don’t feel much like ridin’, You just wish the trip was through
(Chorus)
Here I am, on the road again, There I am, up on the stage There I go, playin’ star again, There I go, turn the page
So you walk into this restaurant, All strung out from the road And you feel the eyes upon you, As you’re shakin’ off the cold You pretend it doesn’t bother you, But you just want to explode Yeah, most times you can’t hear ’em talk, Other times you can
All the same old cliches, Is it woman, is it man And you always seem outnumbered, You don’t dare make a stand Make your stand
(Chorus) Ah But here I am, on the road again, There I am, up on the stage Here I go, ah playin’ star again, There I go, turn the page Woah
Out there in the spotlight, You’re a million miles away Every ounce of energy, You try and give away As the sweat pours out your body, Like the music that you play
Later in the evenin’, As you lie awake in bed With the echoes of the amplifiers, Ringin’ in your head You smoke the day’s last cigarette, Rememberin’ what she said
What she said
Yeah, and here I am, On the road again, There I am, up on that stage Here I go, playin’ star again, There I go, turn the page And there I go, turn that page
There I go, yeah, Here I go, yeah, yeah There I go, yeah, Here I go, yeah Here I go, There I go And I’m gone
Love them or hate them there’s really no middle-ground when it comes to one of the Big Four of thrash metal. You either love the band even through their dabbling into hard rock and the Bob Rock-era or you hate them for the perceived selling out and the Bob Rock-era. You ask any Metallica fan and they would pretty much agree that their third album, Master of Puppets, was the band at it’s peak. There would be some debate on whether the Black Album was where the band began to alienate some of it’s earliest fans, but that’s not what we’re here for.
We are here for the latest “Song of the Day” and it’s from their second full-length album, Ride the Lightning. The song is the band’s very first power ballad and follows the album’s theme and exploration of death. Where the album’s title took on the concept of death by electric chair the song chosen this time around is about the band’s exploration of the concept of suicide.
Yes, this was the song that the band had gotten into hot water for it’s suicidal lyrics which purportedly led to teens offing themselves after listening to it constantly. What critics of the song failed to realize was just how much teens at the time the song came out saw the song as therapeutic. They related to the song and used it as an outlet for their own alienation and depression.
Just like it’s subject matter it begins with a melancholy melody that gives a glimpse into the singer’s mindset. It’s not the typical fast playing many have associated with thrash, but that arrives soon enough as the song finishes off it’s vocals with a fade out that leads into Kirk Hammett’s 2-minute guitar solo that ultimately fades out as well…
The song that critics of metal gets wrong then and continues to even now is the classic “Fade to Black”.
Fade to Black
Life it seems, will fade away Drifting further every day Getting lost within myself Nothing matters no one else I have lost the will to live Simply nothing more to give There is nothing more for me Need the end to set me free
Things not what they used to be Missing one inside of me Deathly lost, this Can’t be real Cannot stand this hell I feel Emptiness is filling me To the point of agony Growing darkness taking dawn I was me, but now he’s gone
No one but me can save myself, but it’s too late Now, I can’t think, think why I should even try Yesterday seems as though it never existed Death Greets me warm, now I will just say goodbye
“Hold my breath as I wish for death Oh please God, wake me”
Yeah, my taste in music see-sawed back and forth from one end of the spectrum to the other. Yesterday, I reminisced about one of the best R&B ballads from my time as a teenager in high school during the late 80’s. Today, I focus on one of the songs on metal end which remains (in my opinion) one of the best metal songs ever put out there.
“One” was the final single released from Metallica’s fourth album, …And Justice For All.
The song also had the distinction of being the first ever Metallica song which was accompanied by a music video shot for it. Metallica had avoided making music videos of their songs for years. Their success as a band never needed the assistance that MTV could provide. They saw it as a badge of honor that they’ve never made a music video, but that change in January 1989 when the single for “One” was released and a music video followed soon after.
A music video that combined elements from the 1971 anti-war film Johnny Got His Gun and the band playing inside a warehouse. It was an effective video that more than convinced many skeptics that when done properly a metal music video was possible. This wasn’t a video using garish colors, over-the-top imagery of hair metal music videos. It was a video that was just as heavy and through-provoking as the song it was made for.
When I saw a band described as “crust black metal”, my first thoughts went out to recent Darkthrone and Carpathian Forest’s Fuck You All!!!!. I was hoping for the latter of the two, but I found something far more unique to itself. With a healthy dose of thrash, grindcore, and a dozen other influences in the mix, Fukpig deliver a sound I can appreciate from a lot of different angles. Their discography is showing 18 releases in a span of 14 years, so I imagine a lot of people knew what to expect. I didn’t.
Fukpig – This World is Weakening, from This World is Weakening
If This World is Weakening has the look and feel of a grindcore album, it certainly does not share their typical length. At 36 minutes, there is no lack of content. The album actually feels rather lush, with a lot of experimentation and variation that does not succumb to the repetitive. The title track, for instance, opens with a bit of a doom/stoner drone before bursting into a really old-school black metal grind, harkening to the days when the style was not so distinct from thrash. The vocals are deliciously distorted in a way that reminds me a little of Converge, and I’m already loving it. But Fukpig aren’t content to leave it at a black/thrash throwback. 35 seconds on, a drum roll tosses you into a really desperate and compelling tremolo chorus that turns the song on its head. It wouldn’t feel terribly out of place in a screamo song, and it definitely tosses “This World is Weakening” into a category all of its own. Not too many 2 minute songs can feel this complete.
Fukpig – Fascist Moron, from This World is Weakening
The next track is night and day different. The crusty thrash gets layered over a synth chorus that you normally wouldn’t hear outside of Norway. It quickly goes from a nearly tongue-in-cheek dramatic delight to sick and crunchy in the chorus, and then we move on to a dirty breakdown that makes me want to rock my head into orbit, all to a comical grindcore squawk of “FASCIST MORON!” Nearly every song on this album is a world of its own, totally distinct from the rest. Fukpig manage this while rarely extending a track beyond the two minute mark. The unmistakable vocals and thrash beat might be the most consistent features, along with some faux-dramatic synth, but each track seems to put these to use in novel new ways. This World is Weakening taps just about every trend in extreme music and crams them into explosive shells of crusty, thrashy old school black metal. It can and inevitably will replace bands like Pig Destroyer in my really limited collection of tight brutality–a musical mood that strikes me only occasionally but always seems to lack sufficiently appealing sources. There is an underlining intelligence to This World is Weakening that keeps your mind running when you pause from the direct confrontation long enough to suck it in.
Concerts have been a major part of a teenager’s transition into adulthood. Often have we begged our parents to get us tickets to our favorite band’s concert as they toured straight into our hometowns. We’d beg, cajole, promise whatever just to be able to attend that big show that we thought everyone we knew would be attending. Rock concerts have been a huge part of this coming-of-age journey. It’s the show that our parents dreaded (especially the metal shows) and the ones that pulled in the outcasts kids.
We would either outgrow this youthful event because it’s not something that interests us, but most often it’s just because we either do not have the time to attend rock concerts due to work and other adult responsibilities. While we would still go to a concert of our favorite band when time and money affords for it in the end it’s something that’s become more of a past-time to reminisce about.
Metallica: Through the Never is the latest concert film that could change all that. Filmed during Metallica’s latest world tour, the film was directed by Nimrod Antal (Armored, Predators) and turns what could’ve been just your typical concert film into a surreal mixture of excellent concert footage and an apocalyptic narrative involving one of the band’s roadies. The latter felt like an extended music video and the lack of dialogue by the film’s narrative lead in Dane DeHaan does give this part of the film it’s surreal vibe. This part of the film could easily come off as one of Metallica’s music videos. It has mayhem involving nameless rioters battling an equal number of police right up to a nameless, gas-masked horseman who ends up paying particular attention to our beleaguered roadie.
Yet, while this apocalyptic-like narrative makes for a nice sideshow the main reason to see Metallica: Through the Never is the concert footage. While Antal does a good job with the story going outside the concert it’s inside where he shines. Making use of over 20 cameras on cranes, dollies and handhelds, Antal is able to make the concert footage feel like one was actually at the show. He uses every trick in the book from close-ups of each band member to sweeping crane shots that gives a bird’s-eye view of the concert.
It’s this part of the film that may just be one way for those of us who grew up going to concerts but have lost the time to return to such events to finally experience them again. It helps that the 3D used helps give the feel of not just being there but an enhanced experience that one may not find while actually attending the show live. But it doesn’t end in just the visuals.
A concert film can only go so far on how it looks. In the end, if the film doesn’t do a great job capturing the audio of the event then why even bother watching. Metallica: Through the Never doesn’t skimp on the audio assault. It is just exactly what I mean when I say audio assault. The audio in this film brought me back to attending past metal shows from my youth in near-perfect volume and clarity.
Metallica: Through the Never needs to be experienced in as big a screen as possible and if one’s able to see it on IMAX then I recommend they do so, but if that’s not possible then I still say go out and see this unique take on the ubiquitous concert film. It might not be the same as attending a Metallica concert, but it’s the next best thing to actually attending one.
Been more than a bit listless and tired of late so what do I do to fix that than listening to some classic metal. One can’t get any more classic metal than one of the best metal instrumentals ever: Metallica’s “Orion” off of their Master of Puppets full-length album.
“Orion” would mark one of the the last great works by Metallica’s great bassist, Cliff Burton. He would pass away while on tour to promoting this album. Details of his passing could be read anywhere so will bypass that to instead celebrate one of his great achievements with this extended instrumental which just showed how great a metal bass player he was, but also just one of the greatest metal musicians of his time.
Fans of metal always wonder just how much more he could’ve contributed to Metallica’s success if he had lived. Would their later albums have been up and down in quality? Would he have gone along with the changes wrought by the band’s producer after his death, Bob Rock, whoguided the band out from their thrash metal roots and into a more pop-friendly hard rock sound. Metal will never know the answer to these questions, but if Burton had lived and remained with the band it’s more than likely that Metallica wouldn’t be the one we know now after their many stylistic changes, but probably still considered by their early, loyal fans as being pure thrash.
One thing for sure, we probably would’ve been given more extended instrumentals like “Orion”.
Today marks a sad day for the metal world as Jeff Hanneman, guitarist and founding member of the metal band Slayer, passed away at the age of 49.
He now joins other metal gods (Burton, Dimebag, Bonham and Dio just to name a few) who were taken too soon up in Valhalla where, I sincerely hope, they’re starting up a jam session to create the metal supergroup of supergroups.
To commemorate and memorialize Hanneman’s impact on the metal scene these past 30 or so years I’d like to share my favorite Slayer song: “Seasons In The Abyss”.
R.I.P. Jeff Hanneman…
“Lo there do I see my father, Lo there do I see my mother, my Sisters and my brothers , Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call me, they bid me take my place among them, in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live forever.”
Seasons In The Abyss
Razors edge Outlines the dead Incisions in my head Anticipation the stimulation To kill the exhilaration
(chorus:) [part 1] Close your eyes Look deep in your soul Step outside yourself And let your mind go Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
[part 2] Close your eyes And forget your name Step outside yourself And let your thoughts drain As you go insane… [go] insane
Innate seed To watch you bleed A demanding physical need Desecrated, eviscerated Time perpetuated
Close your eyes Look deep in your soul Step outside yourself And let your mind go Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
Close your eyes… and forget your name Step outside yourself… and let your thoughts drain As you go insane… [go] insane
Inert flesh A bloody tomb A decorative splatter brightens the room An execution a sadist ritual Mad intervals of mind residuals
Close your eyes Look deep in your soul Step outside yourself And let your mind go Frozen eyes stare deep in your mind as you die
Close your eyes… and forget your name Step outside yourself… and let your thoughts drain As you go insane… [go] insane
Through the Shattered Lens 